Temporal constraints and their interpretations in natural language

A series of extensions of tense theory of atomic events to accommodate durative events is presented. The interaction of tenses with time adverbials is discussed and a constraint for tense-adverb agreement is proposed. Sentences containing clauses connected by a temporal connective, such as 'when', 'before', 'after', etc. may have different aspect interpretations, depending on the situation types and verb forms involved. In particular, 'before' and 'after' are not always inverses of each other. One can adopt a similar mechanism to take account of this kind of sentence. Their temporal constraints are described, and their temporal interpretations can be obtained accurately.<>